Sell-side analysts work for brokerage firms and make stock recommendations – not necessarily only to short sellers.

The two analysts that Musk cut off were Toni Sacconaghi from Bernstein and Joseph Spak from RBC Capital.

Sacconaghi is one of the top-ranked analysts on Tipranks and while he indeed never recommended Tesla’s stock, he has a ‘hold’ rating on it with a $265 price target. With this said, Sacconaghi did publish a note to clients a month ago claiming that the Model 3 order take rate was low among Tesla owners, which was misleading since it’s based on only one configuration currently available.

As for Spak, he is also ranked high on Tipranks and he also has a ‘hold’ rating on Tesla’s stock – with a price target of $305.

While neither analysts can be considered a ‘Tesla bull’, they haven’t really been contributing much to the short seller thesis on Tesla.

But Musk then continues clarifying that it wasn’t only about their intention, but the fact that questions were getting repetitive:

The reason the Bernstein question about CapEx was boneheaded was that it had already been answered in the headline of the Q1 newsletter he received beforehand, along with details in the body of the letter

Reason RBC question about Model 3 demand is absurd is that Tesla has roughly half a million reservations, despite no advertising & no cars in showrooms. Even after reaching 5k/week production, it would take 2 years just to satisfy existing demand even if new sales dropped to 0.

Ahead of the call with analysts, Tesla releases their ‘shareholders letter’, which analysts have an hour to go through before the call.

During the call, analysts have direct access to Tesla’s management and it’s generally not the time to ask for clarifications on what was released in the letter. The analysts are also given some time with Tesla’s investor relations to ask further questions after the call, which is generally used for those types of clarifications.

As for Spak’s question, it sounded like a clarification on the Sacconaghi’s previously mentioned note about the take rate.

Update: It looks like Spak got his answer after all:

The take would make Tesla look bad, but it's not actually representative of demand because Tesla is only producing one configuration of the Model 3 right now. So of course res holders who want AWD, standard battery, non-premium package, are all deciding not to order.

As we already discussed yesterday, I think it was more about the questions getting repetitive and boring than anything else.

It looks like Musk might have been misinformed about the analysts’ intentions. While it’s true that there’s a lot of short interest on Tesla’s stock, those two are not the go-to analysts when short sellers are trying to justify their position.

I think that Musk is trying to adjust now after the backlash and the solution is probably somewhere in the middle with a mix of questions from Wall Street analysts, the media, and representatives from the retail investor base.